Artwork story
About Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase
The artist and artwork
Vincent van Gogh painted Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase in 1890 in oil on canvas. Largely self-taught, he pursued art at twenty-seven and concentrated on drawing before color. His palette and touch changed after he moved to Paris in 1886 and encountered Impressionism and Neo-Impressionists Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. After Arles and a year at the asylum in Saint-Rémy, he settled in Auvers-sur-Oise in May 1890 near his brother Theo and under Dr. Paul Gachet's care. The Met links this bouquet's handling to landscapes from those final Auvers months.
The world around it
Van Gogh worked during the French Third Republic, as modern artists built reputations through critics, independent exhibitions, dealers, and international networks beyond the official Salon. His pictures appeared at the Salon des Indépendants from 1888 to 1890 and with Les XX in Brussels in 1890; a painting sold there, and critic Albert Aurier published the first full-length article about him that January. This bouquet belongs to that emerging recognition, but it is absent from Van Gogh's surviving letters, so scholars still debate its place within his rapid late production.
A detail to notice
A pale vase sits low beneath a bouquet spreading across most of the canvas. Cream, yellow, pink, red-orange, and green forms press against a deep blue field, while two high blossoms lean apart. The Met describes stippled, crosshatched, and curving strokes in high impasto, with blue contours binding separate forms into a tapestrylike whole. Distinctive blues, ochers, and graphic brick-shaped hatchings connect it to Auvers landscapes made shortly before Van Gogh died on July 29, 1890. Time changed the image too: fading red pigments caused prominent red flowers to lose definition as contour lines weakened. The painting records both forceful handling and the continuing physical life of color.
Look closer: materials, scale, and subjects
The recorded object is painting made in Oil on canvas and held in the European Paintings department.
Recorded dimensions include 25 5/8 x 21 1/4 in. (65.1 x 54 cm).
Subject terms include Flowers and Still Life. Treat them as guideposts, not a complete interpretation.
Collection history and public-domain source
The collection credit line is The Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Collection, Gift of Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg, 1993, Bequest of Walter H. Annenberg, 2002.
The individual artwork page and official image were verified as Public Domain on 2026-08-24.
No Context Gallery independently uses the public-domain image. The source museum has not endorsed, sponsored, or affiliated itself with these products.
Research sources
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